Astound Commerce enlists Hobbycraft for e-commerce replatforming project

UK arts and craft retailer, Hobbycraft, has partnered with Astound Commerce to create a new e-commerce platform.

The replatforming implementation is central to the brand’s roadmap as it seeks to expand its omnichannel offering to further fulfil its mission to ‘Get Britain Making’.

Following a competitive pitch, Astound Commerce was selected to deliver the new Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC) platform, which it built and implemented using its SFCC accelerator,  Velocity Reference Architecture (VRA).

VRA was supplemented with third-party technologies, including Bazaarvoice to integrate product ratings, reviews and Q&As and cross border selling specialist, Global-e, to enable Hobbycraft shoppers across the world to pay in local currency and use local delivery services for order fulfilment.

Bloomreach was deployed to provide a richer and more personalised search experience and enhanced merchandising and web content to improve conversion rates, while its CDP enables Hobbycraft to use multiple internal and external data sources to further power and enrich personalisation.

Additionally, the backend capabilities of the platform have increased efficiency for the Hobbycraft team, making marketing, merchandising and the management of the site much less time consuming. 

The integration of ClassBento onto the platform means enthusiasts can now access workshops where they can discover new crafts and master top techniques with help from Hobbycraft’s in-house colleagues and Artisans.

By deploying MuleSoft’s open API driven systems architecture, Hobbycraft says that it now has real-time visibility across the different solutions it deploys to manage product, prices, store operations, customer engagement, orders and inventory updates.

This has also streamlined the integration with its carrier management platform, Sorted, and has enhanced the future capability to integrate emerging channels and features.

Matt Louth, IT Director, at Hobbycraft, comments: “Our exceptional e-commerce growth during lockdown made clear the importance of placing digital transformation at the heart of our multi-channel offering to ensure we have the right capabilities in place to support and grow the business.”

“We chose to partner with Astound Commerce because of their unparalleled experience and knowledge and they were a trusted partner in every way - working as an extension of our team and providing the highest levels of technical and delivery expertise.”

E-commerceStaff WriterHobbycraft, Astound Commerce, E-commerce, Online retail, E-commerce replatforming, Retail technology, Bloomreach, Salesforce Commerce Cloud platform, Omnichannel retailComment